Summary

Making your own soda is easy, inexpensive, and fun. Best of all, you can control the sweetness level and ingredients to create a drink that suits your individual taste. In this guide to all things fizzy, Andrew Schloss presents a handful of simple techniques and recipes that will have you recreating your favorite commercial soft drinks and experimenting with new flavor combinations. Try your hand at Pomegranate Punch, Sparkling Espresso Jolt, Slightly Salty Caramel Seltzer, and more as you explore the endless bubbly possibilities.

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Homemade Soda - Andrew Schloss

Introduction

Sweet, Cold & Bubbling

Next to oxygen, we need nothing more than we need drink. Plain water is the perfect thirst quencher, yet we have been seeking ways to improve its palatability since the first human took her first sip. Thirst must be fulfilled to sustain life, but once we have satisfied our essential needs, our sensual desire for flavor, color, and invigoration takes over, spurring us to transform plain water into more elaborate beverages whenever we get the chance.

Soda pops are incredibly diverse, but three threads connect all of them: they are all sweet, they are all consumed cold, and they are all carbonated. And now we live in a culture where thirst-quenching has become big business. Sodas, beers, juices, coffees, teas, flavored waters, energy drinks, and sports beverages compete for our potable dollars. But you can stir up homemade sodas that match any of them with better nutrition, with less sugar, and for a fraction of the cost. It can be as simple as mixing a flavorful base into still or sparkling water in your own kitchen.

Sips from the Past

We have no record of the very first human-enhanced beverages, but they were most likely herbal teas or other infusions brewed for medicinal effect, such as the tea North American natives boiled from the roots of sarsaparilla to take as a cough remedy. Historically, people have tended to prefer their beverages hot or cold rather than tepid, a preference that we must presume lies deep in the collective unconscious. Fresh water is naturally susceptible to microbial infestation, and lukewarm water is a natural breeding ground for bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Humans must have learned early on that boiling water made it safe to drink, but what about cold drinks? Chilling does not make contaminated water safer to drink, but naturally cold flowing water is far less likely to contain a harmful amount of contaminants than lukewarm standing water, which is probably why cold running water, particularly bubbling icy cold water, suggests the very essence of purity and refreshment.

The most primal source of bubbly drinks would have been naturally carbonated waters from underground mineral springs. Ancient civilizations believed that bathing in these geologically effervescent waters had healthful and medicinal value, and over the centuries, taking the cure at mineral spring baths became a standard health regimen. Starting in the late 1700s, drinking naturally sparkling mineral water was prescribed for its therapeutic benefit, and by 1810, a method for mass producing soda water— made by mixing still water with sodium bicarbonate and acid to create carbon dioxide bubbles, in imitation of naturally sparkling mineral water — had been given a U.S. patent. Soda fountains producing flavored carbonated waters became commonplace in pharmacies during the nineteenth century, dispensing bubbling remedies for the cure of headaches, hangovers, and nervous afflictions.

However, since geologically carbonated water is relatively rare and the mechanical soda carbonation process came on the scene late in the game, early imbibers experienced effervescence most often as a by-product of fermentation. Fermentation occurs naturally when wild yeasts (microorganisms floating freely in the air) find a source of sugar on which to feed. Given enough food and water, yeasts digest sugar and produce alcohol and carbon dioxide, resulting in a sparkling beverage.

Since yeasts are everywhere, the first effervescent beverages probably developed accidentally. Fresh sweet fruit juices can ferment readily upon a short exposure to air. Fresh apple cider, for example, ferments so quickly that before the advent of pasteurization and refrigeration its transformation to hard cider was just a matter of hours. When early American colonists spoke of cider, then, they were referring to an effervescent alcoholic beverage. (Its alcoholic content was mostly a non-issue, however. Before the proliferation of the temperance movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, few distinctions were drawn between non-alcoholic and mildly alcoholic beverages.)

Because most of the sugar in a fermented juice is consumed by the yeast, brewers commonly added honey or date syrup after fermentation to replenish sweetness, creating an association between sweetness and thirst-quenching that remains today. In the nineteenth century an explosion in the availability of sugar transformed medicinal soda water into dozens of sweetened root- and bark-based soft drinks, including root beer, birch beer, and ginger ale.

Making Bubbles: Methods of Effervescence

Why carbonate drinks? No one has yet proven that carbonation has health benefits, but one contemporary theory looks toward the sensation of carbonation itself for a euphoric effect. We don’t experience carbonation as bubbles. Bubbles bounce. They swell and yield, and when they burst they explode with a whisper. But carbonation feels more like a rapid succession of irritating pinpricks in the mouth. It’s slightly painful but also invigorating. The same can be said of eating chile peppers, which has been shown to release pain-relieving endorphins into the blood, resulting in an afterglow of well-being and pleasure. Does drinking a carbonated beverage produce the same effect? It could explain why we experience carbonated beverages as more refreshing than still ones.

There are three methods of carbonating liquid: geological carbonation, fermentation, and carbon dioxide infusion.

Geological Carbonation

Geological carbonation predates man-made methods by millions of millennia. Carbonated water occurs naturally in underground springs, when gases produced by microorganisms get trapped in stone-locked reservoirs of water. Because the underground water is held in contact with stone on all sides, it becomes infused with soluble minerals, which gives spring water most of its health benefits, and its nickname, mineral water. In the United States, the FDA allows any water that is drawn from a geologically and physically protected underground water source and contains 250 parts per million of total dissolved solids (minerals) to be sold as mineral water, either still or sparkling.

The innate carbonation of naturally sparkling mineral water can be very subtle or obvious, depending on the amount of gas dissolved in the water. Carbon dioxide liquefies readily, but its solubility increases as water gets colder, which means that sparkling mineral water taken from warmer springs tends to be less effervescent, with larger, weaker bubbles, while water taken from colder springs can be wildly bubbly and sharper on the tongue.

Fermentation

People have been making wine, beer, mead, and other fermented beverages for more than five thousand years, but we didn’t truly understand the process until the 1850s, when Louis Pasteur linked the conversion of sugar into alcohol to the life cycle of yeasts. Yeasts are a group of microscopic single-celled fungi so small that twenty thousand of them could fit in the space of this period. There are hundreds of different species, but humankind has latched on to one in particular, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewer’s sugar fungus), that is useful for both baking and brewing. For most of history brewers and bakers maintained their particular yeast strains by saving a piece of dough from a batch of bread, or skimming the yeasty surface foam from a vat of brewing beer, to start the next batch, but now manufacturers cultivate special strains of yeasts for specific purposes. Although any yeast can be used for making soda, the one commonly used for fermenting champagne (Saccharomyces bayanus), sold as champagne or wine yeast, yields the cleanest-tasting (least yeasty) fermented soft drinks. (See here for more on choosing a yeast.)

Yeasts metabolize sugar for energy and produce alcohol and carbon dioxide gas in the process. Winemakers allow that carbon dioxide to escape, leaving behind the alcohol. Soda makers, however, trap the CO2 gas and stop the fermentation before a significant amount of alcohol accumulates. The carbonation resulting from yeast has a silken and soft quality, with a network of bubbles so fine that they often take the form of foam rather than self-contained bubbles.

The concentration of alcohol in fermented beverages can range from a fraction of a percent to about 12 percent. At that point the level of alcohol will kill most yeast, so if you want a stronger alcoholic beverage you have to concentrate the alcohol content, usually through distillation. Typically wines are 5 to 12 percent alcohol, and beer is around 6 percent (although some ales are made to 9 percent). A highly distilled liquor like vodka is usually around 40 percent alcohol, though it can range up to 96 percent. In contrast, soft drinks’ alcohol content is less than 0.5 percent.

Carbon Dioxide Infusion

Sources of naturally carbonated water are limited, and carbonating beverages through fermentation can yield inconsistent results. In 1772, Englishman Joseph Priestley published a pamphlet, Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air, describing a process of infusing carbon dioxide into still water by dripping sulfuric acid onto chalk and capturing the resulting gases in a bowl of agitated water. Priestley erroneously proposed the process to Captain James Cook as a means of curing scurvy aboard ship for his second voyage to the South Seas. Priestley never exploited the commercial potential of his discovery, but others did. Ányos Jedlik, a Hungarian inventor, opened a bottled carbonated water factory in Europe in the 1830s and began selling carbonated water on a large scale. And about 25 years earlier, in 1807, Benjamin Silliman, a professor of chemistry at Yale University, carbonated water under pressure and started bottling and selling carbonated water locally in New Haven, Connecticut.

In commercial soda production, carbon dioxide is forced into filtered water at about 120 psi (pounds per square inch). This makes artificially carbonated water far more effervescent than water that is naturally carbonated through geologic happenstance or fermentation, and because the bubbles are under more pressure, they become wildly active upon release. Artificially carbonated liquids can be painful to consume directly upon being opened, which is why most of us have learned to wait a few seconds before downing a soft drink right out of the bottle. Transferring the soda into a glass releases a good percentage of the carbonation, making it easier to drink. Because carbon dioxide is more soluble at lower temperatures, icing sodas preserves their effervescence. (This is also why warm soda is more likely to bubble over when poured — more carbon dioxide is released from the liquid.)

Flavoring

When carbon dioxide is forced into water, a small amount of carbonic acid forms, giving carbonated water a brighter, cleaner flavor than that of still water. That slight acidity is one reason that mineral waters, which tend toward alkalinity, taste better when bubbly than when still.

The natural acidity of carbonated water is a benefit to flavored sodas. Like salt, acid sourness expands our sense of taste, which is why tart foods and beverages taste clean and fresh. Acids also have the ability to break down the molecular structure of other ingredients, thereby releasing flavor molecules into the nose and elevating the perception of all the aromatics in a beverage.

The various flavors of sodas come from brewed flavor bases. To make a flavor base, you simply simmer or steep aromatic ingredients in water, infusing the water with their flavor. Once the flavor base is fully infused, you sweeten it, dilute it to the desired strength with water, and carbonate it. Voilà! Soda. (See here for more about flavoring ingredients.)

Sweeteners

Sweetness is a universally appealing flavor. Our first food, mother’s milk, is sweet, and the taste of sweetness suggests to us a quick and easy source of energy. For most of human history, sugar from fruits and vegetables has offered an efficient way to get a lot of calories while expending minimal effort. Sugar dissolved in water is the most efficient form of energy, and it could be that some of the stimulation we feel from sodas is the promise of an energy boost.

I use a variety of liquid sweeteners in home soda making, including simple syrup, agave syrup, honey, and molasses. (See here for more about sweeteners.)

High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Although sucrose (table sugar) was the most common sweetener for the first soft drinks, high-fructose corn syrup took its place in most commercial soda production starting in the mid-1980s.

Sugar syrups are used to sweeten beverages because they do not readily form crystals. Although syrups can be made from almost any vegetable, the most common source in the United States is corn. Corn syrup is made by heating cornstarch with acid, which breaks the starch into simple sugars. Regular corn syrup is 14 percent glucose, 11 percent maltose, 20 percent water, and 55 percent starch, making corn syrup about 40 percent as sweet as sugar. In the 1960s, researchers discovered that adding an enzyme to corn syrup converted much of its glucose to fructose, which is much sweeter. The high-fructose corn syrup used most often in beverage fabrication is 55 percent fructose, making it about one and a half times sweeter than sugar. Because it is relatively inexpensive and supersweet, with a flavor similar to that of sugar, high-fructose corn syrup has become a popular cost-effective sweetener for many processed foods, and it has transformed the soft drink industry.

The industry’s switch from sugar to high-fructose corn syrup was largely a matter of cost. In the United States massive subsidies for corn growing ($56 billion in the last decade) have kept the price of corn sweeteners low, and import tariffs have kept the price of cane sugar high. And though high-fructose corn syrup is frequently blamed for the epidemic of obesity in industrialized countries, it does not have more calories than regular table sugar. The association between high-fructose corn syrup and obesity may be a simple fact of overconsumption — we’re eating a lot of sugar these days, and most of it tends to be high-fructose corn syrup.

Making sodas at home is an excellent way to reduce your consumption of high-fructose corn syrup, and to moderate your sugar intake in general: you brew only what you’ll drink, and you can adjust the sweetness of the brew to your own taste.

The term soda water is used to sell natural sparkling water from soda fountains, an early name for mineral springs.

1807

Benjamin Silliman, a chemistry professor at Yale University, bottles and sells water carbonated with carbonic gas.

1809

Soda water is sweetened and flavored with gingerroot to make ginger pop (a.k.a. ginger beer, ginger champagne, or ginger ale).

1810

The first U.S. patent is issued for the manufacture of imitation sparkling mineral waters (soda water).

1812

British poet Robert Southey refers to a new word, pop, deriving from the sound made when a cork is drawn from a bottle of soda.

1819

The first U.S. patent for a soda fountain is granted to Samuel Fahnestock.

1824

Patent issued for Ayer’s Sarsaparilla (which was nothing more than a sweetened sarsaparilla beverage) as a blood-purifying medicine.

1825

The first commercial soda fountain opens in a Philadelphia apothecary.

1829

The soda siphon is invented in France by Deleuze and Dutillet, two Parisian jewelers. They name their invention the siphon champenois.

1835

The first bottled man-made soda water is sold in the United States.

1845

Poland Spring Water begins to be bottled in Maine.

1854

Vanilla-flavored cream soda is introduced.

1855

Prohibition laws are adopted by Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, and New York.

1858

J. Schweppes and Co. of London introduces tonic water as an improved quinine water.

1874

The first ice cream soda is sold at the semi-­centennial celebration of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

1876

Charles E. Hires introduces bottled herb tea in Philadelphia, made from various roots and herbs; by 1880 he changes the name to root beer and advertises it as the National Temperance Drink. In the same year, Moxie soda, a soft drink made from gentian root, is introduced under the name Moxie Nerve Food in Lowell, Massachusetts.

1881

Imperial Inca Cola is made from extracts of kola nut and coca leaf.

1885

Charles Aderton, the fountain man at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas, develops the formula for Dr Pepper.

1886

Dr. John S. Pemberton creates a cola and sells it at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia, as a cure for hangovers and headaches. His bookkeeper, Frank Robinson, names it Coca-Cola.

1887

Asa Candler, another Atlanta pharmacist, buys the rights for Coca-Cola syrup for $2,300 and repositions it as refreshment rather than medicine. By 1890 it is the most popular soda fountain drink in the United States.

1890

Canada Dry Ginger Ale starts production in a small Toronto plant opened by pharmacist John J. McLaughlin.

1892

The crown bottle cap is invented. The cap keeps carbon dioxide from escaping bottles of soda pop, allowing it to be enjoyed at home, rather than at soda fountains.

1893

The Coca-Cola trademark is registered. x Hires Root Beer is introduced in bottles, but advertising promotes the advantages of brewing at home from Hires concentrate.

1898

Caleb Bradham, a pharmacist in New Bern, North Carolina, starts marketing his own cola formula under the name Brad’s Drink. In the same year, Perrier bottled water is introduced.

1902

Bradham founds the Pepsi-Cola Company. The trademark is registered the following year.

1904

Pepsi-Cola becomes a bottled beverage. x Poland Spring is declared the best spring water at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis.

1905

Claude Hatcher opens Union Bottling Works in Columbus, Georgia to package Royal Crown Ginger Ale and other sodas he’d begun brewing in the basement of his family’s grocery.

The Howdy Company debuts its new drink, Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda, which will later become 7UP.

1933

Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution repeals Prohibition.

1936

A Spanish pharmacist introduces an orange soda he calls Naranjina (small orange) at the Marseilles Trade Fair. Leon Beton buys the formula, renames it Orangina, and introduces the product in his home country of Algeria, where it is a huge hit.

1939

Pepsi-Cola challenges Coke with the jingle Nickel, Nickel, which became a hit: Pepsi-Cola hits the spot. / Twelve full ounces, / That’s a lot. / Twice as much, for a nickel, too, / Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you.

1941

Coca-Cola is officially sold as Coke for the first time.

1942

The United States enters World War II and imposes a sugar ration on U.S. soda companies, limiting use to 50 percent of the amount used the previous year.

1945

Coke becomes a registered trademark.

1950

Pepsi reduces the sugar content of its cola and repositions itself as the light refreshment.